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Further aMozilla Developments
DrPsycho writes "Just a quick follow up to the previous article
that appeared on slashdot about the development of
aMozilla, the Mozilla port for the Amiga. The people behind the project have started posting screenshots of the Navigator layout under
AmigaOS, and the look & feel of Messenger. News about the project is available here. They've also started an eZine about aMozilla. Looks like it might be more than vapour after all. "
As much as I once loved the Amiga, I have to admit, the window decorations are just downright ugly.
Why in the hell are they using MUI?
I thought this was a open source project..
Cool. I would really like to see the Amiga emerge as a lower-cost alternative to my beloved Mac in the realm of desktop publishing and 3D graphics, if only to keep Apple on their toes and their prices down. Things like this mozilla port certainly help. And my big bro' with his A4000 should be pleased. . .
Paul H.
washuu7@yahoo.com
I think the Amiga would have a much more rosy
future if the released AmigaOS as Open source. It
would allow a greater number of people to provide
cross platform software. It would also allow it
to be updated faster rather than being already
5 years behind. Long live the home computer!
-kojak
If that is correct then I don't see why open source in assembler would be any different than
open source in 'c'. The same principle would apply and I think there are so many Amiga fanatics that it might just work.
-kojak
Most of the original OS code was written in BCPL. Then there was conversion to C for the 2.x series, but BPTRs will still pervasive for some library functions due to legacy reasons. The OS definitely wasn't "largely written in assembler."
Just as big, and twice as slow.
People complained that MUI was too slow a few years back. But they referred to *A500*!
Sure this is true, and a standard A1200 may not fly either.
Now try Gtk+themes on a I386, it's simply unusable!
MUI has been constantly improved and is *highly optimized* for the Amiga hardware (of course that can't be done the same way for the highly diverse Intel architecture). MUI is way more efficient than all those toolkit stuff on Linux.
(now I don't argue that other stuff like -rather ugly- triton was even more efficient, but this just shows that the Amiga played in a different league considering efficiency. I'd wish this had a higher priority among Linux developers...)
- doesn't have expansion slot anymore!!!
- no IRDA port anymore
- still unusable mouse
- incredibly bloated OS (iMac loads Rom into Ram)
- still comes with only 32Megs, whereas 64 are barely enough
...
If I want a colour case, I don't need to buy an iMac.
Unless they have the browser window run on an X screen (and most
Amiga users don't run (or like) X) it _can't_ be completely open
source. Sooner or later, you have to make an OS or library call,
and Amiga OS itself isn't open source. Unlike Linux, any Amiga
project's openness has to 'bottom out' somewhere. Same for 'Doze
and Mac.
I follow the mailing list, and from what I can tell, the coders really
haven't the foggiest idea of how to be a law-abiding member of the Mozilla
team. The people who are supposed to be working on the code don't talk
about any of the technical details of what they're doing or what they're
planning to work on. There is little mention of NGLayout, or the plans of
what to port when, or any progress reports on what's going on.
Sure, they have an FE in progress, and it should be nice, but if they haven't
got any damned idea of what they're doing with the actual porting of
the BROWSER, the project is hopeless.
They don't mention CVS, they don't mention keeping up-to-date with the progress
being made on mozilla.org, they aren't registered as a true team or module development
group on the site either. Apparently the Amiga-MUI FE won't be open source, which
is (imho) dumb.
I am really angsty about this project because it is entirely possible, but I'm
not sure if the current team is really up to the task. I have not seen anything
yet to the contrary.
The Amiga is a great platform and is entirely capable of hosting a port of Communicator
and all of its components. The MUI environment is amazingly flexible, good-looking, and
friendly to both users and programmers. Though it is a bit laggy on
a stock 68k, so is stock Intuition, to an extent, and if your machine
isn't powerful enough to run MUI decently then you shouldn't be pushing to run
Communicator either.
...and for doubters out there, I can almost guarantee that NGLayout on a 68060-50Mhz Amiga,
if ported by the right coders and done correctly (I'm crossing my fingers), will
be just as fast or faster than a low-end Pentium.
I dunno what Amiga you have, but if it's so good spread A1200, you can use several fast io port addons like Hypercom which gives you transfer rates up to 460kbits with very low CPU stall.
/. got Xircom PCMCIA modems working with Amiga? I've got 56k modem/Ethernet combo by Xircom on PCMCIA card and it doesn't work, although card is recognised by PrepCard and ModemTest.
An alternative is to buy cheap PCMCIA modem and use it with 'pcmser.device'.
BTW, does anyone of amiga users reading
> and get yourself a quad Xeon 450 machine.
I'd rather get an Alpha server from EnoRex...
Xeon is crap, only about 18% faster that the PII
at the same MHz.
The Alpha I use every once in a while rox and has 4Mb Leve2 cache on every CPU
Who says Amigas are outdated? Scarce, yes. Unsupported by its own company (as of late), yes. A computer which has gone through hell and still survived, yes. Outdated? F--- no!
Note that I did look for this information but I couldn't find otherwise.
Also, one more thing: You have to release the source. I have seen a bunch of stuff floating around on their eZine about beta .exes - but do not forget to make available the source code, because otherwise you're violating the NPL.
(I won't get into the debate of cathedral vs. bazaar - both have their proponents and detractors. Regardless of which model you choose to follow, it's not an option on whether to follow the NPL.)
Until they distribute binaries, they are perfectly within their rights under the NPL - but once they do, sources had better be available. I fear the wrath that Mozilla.org will bring upon them (well, it's probably more like "Post them please." If they say "No" then, I really fear the wrath) if they don't follow the NPL.
I have to agree - MUI is terrible. The idea behind it is quite good, but there are a few points that I really really don't like... 1) It is very Microsoft (slow, big, bloated, etc). 2) You have to pay for it - programmers have to pay for the dev. kits, and the users have to pay in order to be able to use things like Themes. The unregistered very just barely works. 3) There are other things, like Triton and ClassAct, which are much fasters. They may not be as configurable, but they are smaller, faster, and produce results as good as unregistered MUI will allow (and they are free!) If you have a look at the Amiga browser AWEB you will see a browser made with ClassAct. You will see that it is still very Amiga like (which I personally still like!), and it works.
It's MUI - it's totally themable right down to the smallest details of every widget (even further than GTK and KDE). Not sure why the screenshot user wants his apps to look like that though.
Matt.
I still think it's fud atm though - an app like that is just a few lines with MUI - just as it would be in KDE or GTK.
--
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Since MUI was released, I'm not sure when that was, but it's probably about 5 years now.
You didn't think the idea of themable widgets was new did you?
Matt.
--
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
There's barely any assembler left as of OS 3.1. Most of that was removed in the transition from 2.04 IIRC. There's still some of course, but only in the tight kernel loops, which would be easy to code out - see the AROS project.
BTW: Allan Havemose (chief developer at Amiga Inc) said he was interested in releasing OS3.1 as open source, probably after 5.0 gets released. (some time in 2000).
Matt.
--
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
The TI-99/4zilla project is at a crucial juncture. We are trying to figure out the best way to distribute the application. Since the standard TI floppy holds 90k, requiring users to have 18 daisy-chained floppy drives may prove inelegant. If anyone knows how to extend page-switching to allow us to break the 32K ROM cartridge limit to make a 1.6MB cart, it would be a big help. We don't want to limit ourselves to the few users out there with those nice, big 5MB hard drives.
:(
Of course, if we could double this ROM capacity again for about 4MB, then we could run it from ROM and get a huge speed increase because we wouldn't have to swap from RAM into the 32K maximum RAM environment.
One interesting feature of TI-99/4Zilla unique to the platform is the availability of 1-bit sprites, addressable through the DOM and ECMAScript. We have a few demo pages at our site for those 99/4 users who are interested. Unfortunately, we can't get it to work properly under eumlators
On a related note, we hear that our friends at the University of Ljubljana are looking for people to help with the Ohio Scientific Challenger port. Besides the constraints of working in a mere 16K of RAM, the project team has concerns about dynamically linking to the libraries stored on audiocassette at a mere 300 baud.
Now finally something that's more than vapour on the Amiga front.
And MUI is a really great toolkit. It's theming capabilities make gtk look pale.
Now if only those serial ports would be a bit faster on my Amiga...
The hard part is trying to get anything in stock. Try National Amiga. If they don't have it they'll know someone who might. Or you can search Agnes for Amiga related articles/web sites.
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975